#SKSP Game Dev Marathon – Day 3

I am spending my weekend working flat out making computer games, all in aid of charity. Several people who donated provided game ideas and the games developed over the next 50-60 hours will be based on these.

Each day I will have a new blog post and I will update it as the day goes on. There is also a live stream running. Refresh this page to get the latest blog update!

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00:08

With only a few minutes on the clock I managed to finish Elephants Vs Monsters. Unfortunately I never finished the remaining suggestion on the list but I think 5 games is pretty good! Some of the games I’m happy with. Some, well not so much. I will do a proper write up tomorrow. For now I’m happy to relax knowing that I’ve put in a fair bit of effort and have some decent results.

I’d still like to polish them up a little, we’ll see. I don’t see any reason why the projects should just be abandoned because the marathon is over! Could maybe get some collaboration on the go, who know!

Check back tomorrow to see my writeup and download the games!

19:10

It is now 48 hours since I opened GameMaker Studio,ready to start the marathon. Since then I have created four games with the fifth coming along nicely!

This time with art

As you can see the game looks a lot more like an actual game now! Quite a lot of the artwork is just free stuff provided either by GameMaker or one of the books. That is actually the case for a lot of the assets I’ve used. There’s still a lot of gameplay to do such as new enemies, new elephant types and scoreboards. Hopefully I can get it finished by 9-10pm tonight. This will give me time for a quick go at the digging game.

I’m still in good spirits although I am really looking forward to tomorrow when I can watch a DVD and play some FIFA!

I’ll still be ensuring that the games are uploaded though. A task for the afternoon then the evening off sounds like a plan!

15:30

Some high quality art assets there

I’m working away on Elephants Vs Monsters, although at the moment it is more “Squares Vs Squares” as I decided not to spend ages faffing about with sprites but instead use squares, get the gameplay working then I can prettify everything, create different units and so forth. Its going okay. I’ve not used GameMaker’s path finding before but it was dead easy and for the most part works quite well. My concern of course is that this could be quite a complex game to make in terms of UI. I’m likely to limit myself to just one level and have it as a highscore table affair – ie keep playing until you die.

It is also quite an interesting game to work on as I’ don’t really play many tower defense games. I loved Plants Vs Zombies but a key part of that was just the comical notes, amusing characters and general Popcap awesomeness. I’ve also got the South Park Tower Defence game which is probably more “old school” from my understanding. I’ll probably be more like the SP version.

I do still hope to have a go at the final game, Muncher. As with Elephants Vs Monsters, its a genre that I’m not so familiar with. I do love Minecraft but that is more about the building and I’ve only played the 2D digging games very briefly… as in 5-10 minutes.

13:20

The final leg of the marathon is here! Having spent 25 hours straight working on games, plus 8 hours prior, I am through four of the six games on the list. People can be saving kids in the digital world along with the real world for fellow SKSPers and folk who have donated. There’s koalas who crash landed in space and need rescuing and a ninja who harnesses the power of gum. Finally we’ve stepped inside the mind of a beagle.

Next up I need to decide, do I dedicate the next 12 or so hours (depending when my body says “no more”) to Muncher – a digging game through food, or shall we have elephants with laser cannons in the game Elephants Vs Monster? Tough choice! Check back shortly to see what I decide.